


You're the Area 51 For Me.

by MeanwhileMelody



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bones gives solid advice, Constellations, Fluff, Get your tooth rot here folks, Human!Spock, Jim doesn't understand a damn thing about people, M/M, Soup features heavily, We think, You want sap I got your sap, its all fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 22:36:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12142611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeanwhileMelody/pseuds/MeanwhileMelody
Summary: Spock Greyson is an alien. Why won't anyone acknowledge this but Jim? Spock Greyson can not be human. Between the ridiculously good grades, the shiny hair, and the dexterous fingers that Jim just knows have an extra alien joint in them, there is no conceivable way that Spock Greyson could be anything but extra terrestrial. Jim is going to prove it.





	You're the Area 51 For Me.

Spock Greyson was an alien. Give Jim a tinfoil hat, his own podcast, maybe a few crazy pills, but he knew the truth. Spock Greyson was a goddamn alien. And Jim was going to be the one to unmask him like he was in an episode of Scooby Doo. 

Literally, maybe. He still wasn't sure if Spock wasn't just a skin suit with three hundred little green men operating him like a marionette. It would certainly explain the way he ate soup. That was what had tipped him off, really. No one ate soup like that, with their elbows tilted at an exact ninety degree angle, and their lips pursed as though they didn't really know how lips worked except to decorate the face. 

Spock's face! That was another thing that had Jim on his computer, obsessively trolling sites about Reptilians and Grey men. (Grey men? Greyson? Coincidence? Jim thought not!) Spock's damn face. It was expressionless. Like someone had gone in for a routine botox and gotten an IV of straight cement to the face. He didn't smile. He didn't laugh. He expressed any and all emotion with eloquent upward and downward flicks of his eyebrows. They were arched and dark, like paintbrushes, and no human had eyebrows like that. They just didn't.

Facts were facts. Spock's fingers were too long to possibly be human. His ears were too pointy. His lanky figure? Bad manufacturing in the alien skin suit companies. They should be ashamed of themselves. Jim had all the evidence he needed right there. It was even more apparent when he actually dared interact with Spock, the extraterrestrial. 

"Eating soup again, Greyson? Don't you ever get bored of the same thing every day?" There was an awful lot of corn in that vegetable soup. No meat. Aliens loved cornfields. Aliens abducted cows. Apparently not to eat. It all made sense. 

If eyebrows could look slightly offended and irritated at the same time, Spock's did. 'How dare you talk to me, you mortal peon!' his eyebrows exclaimed loudly. All he actually said was: "This meal contains adequate nutrition for my current diet. It's taste is pleasing. I see no reason to discontinue my consumption of it."

He said it blandly. More bland than his stupid soup. 

It was like he was parsing out the language through a dictionary in his head. Taking words here and there for their definition, without really comprehending how their meaning would be taken in a real life social situation. He looked distinctly out of place in the school cafeteria, like someone had cut his picture out of a different magazine and pasted it into their school yearbook. 

Strange. Other. Spock put a feeling in Jim's stomach that was a little like a gut twist. Jim didn't know if he liked it or if he was about to puke. He shouldn't have had the mystery meat. Maybe Spock was onto something with that soup. Jim told him so. Spock's eyebrows crawled up his face. Jim stayed at Spock's table.

After that, it became more and more apparent every day that Spock was not of this earth. Most of their conversations started out with Jim aghast. "You've never seen a Disney movie?" Jim gasping. "You've never gone to the zoo?" Jim screaming in the middle of a crowded hallway. "You've never been to McDonald's!" The guy was an alien. You didn't escape McDonald's unless you've been off the planet half your life. 

Sure, Spock hissed at him to lower his voice, but he also got onto Jim's ratty old motorbike with such little hesitation that it could only be his lack of knowledge about human things prompting his fearlessness. Jim took him to McDonald's. Spock was not pleased with the lack of vegetarian options. 

"Have you ever seen the stars? Up close?" Jim asked Spock, the both of them splayed out over a wooden picnic bench in the park, picking at fries with the voracity of seagulls. The sky wasn't dark yet, just dimming. Like someone up there was setting the mood. Jim guessed that's why people thought sunsets were romantic. Jim didn't think sunsets were half as beautiful as the night sky. He bet Spock thought that too. Bet Spock got the same feeling of home when he traced out constellations in the crushed velvet black.

It was hard not to leap out of his seat when Spock nodded back at him, swallowing a fry and discreetly wiping away the grease from the corner of his mouth. It was like Spock thought it was a sin to not be neat all twenty four hours of the day. Jim would put down a twenty that he pressed his PJ's. "I own an operable microscope. I have also, on occasion visited planetariums that provided us footage of their deeper space travels." Jim slumped back down on the bench and crammed his mouth full.

Great lie. It was the kind of lie Jim would have used. Jim was great at lying. He'd never really had the urge to lie to Spock. 

"Astrophysics take a bullshit amount of math. And NASA wouldn't have a punk like me. Hell, if they so much as considered me, even I would think twice about all that brainpower they're supposed to have. Still. I like to think about it." Jim looked at Spock, and he got why sunsets were so damned important. When it was dark, you couldn't see shit like the different shades of brown in someone's eyes. You couldn't count their lashes or their flyaway hairs. Sunlight was dusted across his cheekbones and dipping into the hollows of his clavicle like he'd been dipped in golds and pinks.

Gold and Pink shouldn't have suited Spock. He had an olive coloring, wasn't fair, not like Jim. He should have only been beautiful under the moonlight, when the silver caught on his dark hair and turned him into burnished metal. Sunlight shouldn't turn him into this beacon, light him up so bright. Jim was pulled into his orbit. Jim was unable to move. Spock was a tractor beam and Jim was helpless. 

Finally, it was Spock who broke the spell. "I prefer the math. The science. I enjoy numbers. Empirical evidence is so- simple." There was pain in those dark eyes. It wasn't the first time Jim had seen it, but he thought this might be the first time he recognized it for what it was. Spock said simple like he was longing, but like he hated. Like it was a woman he would always come back to, no matter how badly she treated him. Spock wanted simplicity, Jim thought. Jim also thought that Spock hated that he wanted it. Jim understood feeling like that all too well. 

"You have excellent brainpower, Jim. Despite your lack of caution and over indulgence in rebellion. You are not unintelligent. I find you fascinating." Rose colored. Spock was rose colored. Was he blushing? Was it the sunset? Was it Jim's heart in his eyes clouding his vision with red? Lack of evidence.

Nudging his shoulder into Spock's, Jim let himself revel in that brief moment of contact. "I found you fascinating first." Spock looked like he wanted to debate that. Jim didn't let him. He nudged him again to shut him up, and then nudged closer, pressed up against the other boy shoulder to hip. "Look up."

They watched the sky go dark. Jim pointed out his favorite constellations, and told Spock all about the differing cultural significance of each. "Orion has mythology in so many different pantheons, Spock! In Egypt, those stars were tied to Osiris, and in Norse mythology, they were tied to Frigg. That's just the beginning, man." Spock rattled off the names of the stars in Orion's belt with startling speed. "Bellatrix? Like in Harry Potter?" Jim asked, just to piss him off. 

Prim as ever, Spock pointed at the star in question. "Bellatrix as in the third brightest star in the constellation of Orion itself." Made sense. Third brightest star for the third brightest sister. JK knew what she was doing. 

They stayed up until late talking about cultural constellation connotations, and gas giants. By the end, Jim was even more convinced that Spock was an alien. He'd never liked a human that damn much. 

The only thing keeping him sane after that night was the way that Bones yanked him up by his hair in the morning, before Psychology. "You've been banging your head onto this table for exactly ten minutes, kid. And this is the one class you really need to pay attention in, for your own mental health, and more importantly, for mine. Shape up." Bones was a straight shooter. He told Jim exactly what he needed to hear. With a few insults and southern-isms thrown in. That's why he was Jim's best friend.

Bemoaning his very existence, Jim leaned onto Bones like he could take the body weight of a lithely muscled teenage boy without all the air being punched out of him. Shockingly, Bones couldn't. He pushed Jim off and onto his ass. "You ever wanted to get abducted before, Bones?" Jim whined, slumped over on the floor, and wondering if it was really worth it to get up, or if life would carry on from the cold linoleum under his ass. Bones grabbed his hands and heaved him back into a sitting position.

"No responsibilities, no girlfriend, no medical scholarships to apply for- only thing I gotta deal with is some probing? Let's just say that for that kind of deal, I'm down with the ass play, Jimmy." Flinty eyes scrutinized him from the tips of his dirty blond hair to his scuffed up steel toe boots. Jim felt like Bones probably found something lacking in the pathetic puddle on the floor. "What's got you wanting to flee the planet? Fleeing the country wasn't badass enough for you?"

Puppy dog eyes. Bones melted about as much as an icicle in sub-zero temperatures. "He's an alien." 

If he'd expected Bones to call him crazy, to laugh, to fetch Dr. M'Benga and tell him Jim was ready for a psych evaluation pronto, Jim was wrong. All Bones did was nod along sagely. "It always feels like that." Confused, Jim watched Bones lean back in his seat, looking more world weary than any high school brat had any business being. "At least, I think so. What would I know. Haven't been with but two girls, and one of them is going to end up demanding a ring sooner rather than later." Bones clapped a hand on Jim's shoulder. "Still. I think it always feels like that. Like from the second they walked in, your whole world turned into the twilight zone. Like every time you talk to them you're speaking different languages, discovering a whole new species."

What the hell was he getting at? Jim was about to launch into a tirade about how this wasn't about Bones and his clingy, obsessive, Jim-like girlfriend. Jocelyn was way too smart to get married to her highschool sweetheart. She was probably going to do it anyways. And Bones was going to go along with it, because he was so crazy in love with her that he'd lay down in traffic to give her a clear walkway. That didn't relate at all to him and Spock.

Bones was still talking. "UFO flying across the sky, a new person walking into your life? Same thing. Both fill you with the same sense of awe and fear. When you like someone- yeah. They're an alien, man." Oh.

How could anyone think that he liked Spock? Sure. Spock was attractive, in his own, robotic way. And sure, Jim loved that Spock talked like he swallowed a thesaurus. Spock was smart. Wicked funny when he wanted to be. He had cutting opinions on whether or not Schrodinger's cat was a physics or a philosophy experiment. Sure, he was- perfect in every conceivable way. But he was also an alien.

Avoiding Spock for two steady days after worming his way into the guy's life wasn't easy. Jim saw him everywhere. In the halls, in the caf, when he looked up at the night sky and he threw his coke at it for no reason. The starlight caught on the spilled soda in a way that was almost poetic. Spock greeted him, but never once chased after Jim when he booked it across the hall with no explanation. Jim didn't know if he particularly wanted to be chased, but he knew for damn sure that he was disappointed when he wasn't.

Eventually, seeing Spock was inevitable. They were in the cafeteria. Back where it started. Spock didn't have his soup. Jim did. Spock looked at him with a new kind of shuttered caution that made Jim wince internally. Jim sat down next to him. They traded their trays. "How's tricks, Spock?"

"I do not preform tricks, Jim. That seems more your area."

"Are you saying I'm magic, Mr. Greyson?"

"There is another definition of tricks that I think much more likely you would preform." Jim clutched his chest like he had suffered a mortal blow. Spock's eyebrows were quirked up, and there was a light in his eyes. He never asked where Jim had gone for those two days, or why he'd been so sketchy. Jim never offered an explanation. Bones tried to wave him over to their usual table. Jim stayed next to Spock until Bones migrated over.

As is the law of the universe, Spock and Bones did not get along. They were at each other's throats over coffee and tea in seconds. Spock sipped his daintily. Bones slopped his all over a few napkins and notes that would later prove important for the section test. Spock took an almost personal offense to the destruction of knowledge. He wiped off Bone's notes. Bones told him not to touch his shit. Spock told him in no uncertain terms that if he did not wish for someone to take care of his things for him, he would have to do it himself. They had hated each other with a passion ever since.

This also meant, of course, that the three of them were best friends now. Sometimes Jim got jealous of how much attention Bones got out of Spock, even if it was just because Bones ruffled Spock's feathers, but then he remembered that no one could rile Spock the way Jim could, and everything settled. 

Bones approved of Spock. He said so. "If you ever so much as peck that cold blooded reptile on his scaly cheek, I am going to dig your grave, and then mine, because I don't want to live in a world where the two greatest annoyances to man come together and form the apex annoyance." Supportive friends. Can't live without them. 

Which meant that even though he absolutely didn't have a crush on Spock, and there was no danger of that happening, they should obviously keep hanging out, and be even more openly demonstrative in front of Bones, just to push his buttons. Besides, Spock rarely, if ever, protested when Jim threw an arm over his shoulder, or hip checked him, or slid their chairs together so they were practically sitting on one long seat. Friendly stuff. 

Did Jim still think that Spock was an alien? Absolutely. But he was getting used to Spock's little alien-isms. The way he typed too fast, like he was the Usain Bolt of the keyboard. The encyclopedic knowledge of all things physics. The bowl cut that Spock wouldn't grow out, not even for Jim. No matter how much he begged. Jim hypothesized that it was a status symbol on whatever planet Spock was from. 

Spock was part of every day life now. What Jim hadn't anticipated was a day without Spock being awful. Horrible. It was the worst. He wanted to see him. He wanted to talk to him. He wanted to get out of bed and go back to school. Spock really was a bad influence on him. He got over his cold in record time. He had seven messages on his phone from Spock talking about hypothetical cures for the common cold, and his current attempts to replicate them. That wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. The block that toppled the jenga tower. The gust that blew over the house of cards. No, that came the next day.

At exactly nine A.M. on the first day that Jim came back to school after he valiantly battled off a sinus and respiratory infection, he saw Spock Greyson smiling. Spock Greyson was smiling at him. Because of him. Because he was glad to see him. Warning bells clanged. Claxons in Jim's head. He felt the gates inch open, the hounds of hell gnashing their teeth, awaiting their release. 

They didn't hug. That would be too melodramatic, even for Jim Kirk. He'd had a bout with the sniffles, he wasn't coming back from war. Spock said "I am pleased to see that you have recovered, Jim. I was worried that your falling attendance would effect your grades." Jim translated that for Spock with an easy, rakish grin. 

"You mean you were worried period. I see right through you, Greyson. You missed me." He'd missed him. When did they start standing so close? Jim could smell Spock. Fresh, like tea. "Can't go two days without a little Jim in your life?"

The tilt to Spock's chin was haughty, even if the rest of his face was blank. "I will admit that being left alone with Doctor McCoy was far from satisfactory. We must invite a wider array of people to join us during lunch, in case this happens again." It had better not happen again, the eyebrows screamed.

"Perfect your cold remedy, and I'll never have to leave you again." Too much? Too much. Jim didn't care. Spock didn't move away. 

"That is satisfactory." Score.

Bones did not want to play wingman. In fact, Bones was morally and ethically opposed to it. "They're basically the same things, you do know that, right?"

"Then I am twice as opposed, you crazy son of a bitch."

Still, he stayed up all night helping Jim brainstorm how to get Spock to fall madly, deeply in love with him. Jim's plan: suck his dick. Bones shot that down. Jim's second plan: physics come ons. He knew some great ones involving 'Black holes'. Bones nixed that just as quick. Bone's plans were just plan stupid. Flowers? Sure Spock loved botany, but it wasn't a romantic gesture. Spock would just think of that as lab partners bonding. Chocolates? Spock hated chocolate. Allergic or something. Get plastered and make out in the pizza barn parking lot? Well. Valid insight, but Jim liked to think of that as a last resort. 

In the end, it was simplicity itself. It was soup.

Lunch rolled around, and Jim tromped his way into the cafeteria early, fought the heaving masses to get through the line, and purchased one bowl of the stupid vegetarian soup Spock liked. Served special on Tuesdays. He brought it back like he was a wolf presenting a kill to his mate. There was sweat on his brow, a smile on his face, and Spock looked at his soup, looked at Kirk, and looked inwards, apparently. Later, Jim would realize that this, the soup, was Spock's breaking point.

Spock tapped Jim on the shoulder, as polite as a Jehovah's witness before they were allowed to enter the house. "I would like to have a conversation with you. In private." They were in a public school. Still, Jim allowed himself to be dragged to the chemistry lab. He never asked why Spock had a key. Sometimes, it was better not to know. Mostly because Jim would prefer the mystique to Spock's circumspect answer of 'The professor gave me a copy so that I am able to do my extra credit work outside of class time." 

Jim cared even less about the key when Spock kissed him. 

Fast and clumsy, with Spock's too long fingers gripping at his hips and his mouth pressing dry and insistent on Jim's, and it was the worst kiss ever. Jim wanted to laugh. And then Spock grumbled something about angles and did something with his mouth and pulled Jim's body in, in, and best. Best kiss ever. It would have been the best kiss ever even if it ended at dry, because it was Spock. It was them. Spock's spit was cold. Definitely an alien. 

"I hate to be that guy-" Jim was heaving through kiss swollen lips, and Spock's hair was messed up. It was a universal constant in misalignment, and Jim had done that. Caused that kind of chaos. Spock's eyes were dark. Jim was triumphant. "But do you want to explain why we're kissing today when we weren't kissing yesterday? And maybe throw me a bone and tell me whether we'll be kissing tomorrow?"

Fingers twined together as Spock grabbed his hand, as though that was somehow explanation enough in and of itself. Maybe it was. "I wish for us to be in a romantic relationship, Jim. I have desired this- you-, for quite some time. We are well suited to each other. We bring out the strengths in one another, we-" Launching himself lips first at the other boy, Jim cut Spock off then and there. 

Kissing Spock was just as good a second time. "You don't have to sell me on that idea. I'm sold, Spock. I'm in it. Let's do it." It was so easy. Like falling into each other, like looking up at the stars and feeling small. Except with Spock, Jim felt big. His heart felt big, his mouth felt big, even his world felt bigger with Spock in it. They made out on a desk for the entire lunch period, and Jim bit Orion in hickies across Spock's chest. He traced out the constellation after, with his tongue. 

No matter how long they spent together, sometimes Jim was still convinced that Spock was an alien. He was also convinced that it didn't matter. So what if Spock was probably from Delta Vega 500? He texted Jim about Nobel prize winners. He remembered birthdays and anniversaries with eerie accuracy. He insisted that Jim do his homework and he kissed like he was trying to find the meaning of life in Jim's tonsils. Spock was better at being human than any human Jim had ever met. And Jim loved him. 

"You thought I was an alien?"

"It was a perfectly logical hypothesis, Jim. I am not under that impression any- Please do not laugh at me. Jim. James. You are not as attractive when you mock me."


End file.
